Beyonce Is Pregnant Again: The Top 10 #BeyonceBabyNames of 2013

Categories: Lists

Beyonce 560
America wants to be close to Jay-Z and Beyonce. Desperately close. Hashtag close. Because they are officially the last celebrities who have not turned their life together into a weekly show on Bravo, they've hoovered up the country's remaining supply of Camelot-style mythos and gravitas. And because it's 2013, the result is an intense desire to name their child with hashtags.

Beyonce is pregnant again, and #BeyonceBabyNames returned to Twitter with a vengeance on Friday, after a year and a half off. The best part about it is that right now it seems like half of the tweeters are making jokes and the other half just really want to give Beyonce an adorable baby name to use on Blue Ivy's sibling. Here are our 10 favorite examples (so far.) Feel free to use any of them yourself, in case Beyonce (for some reason) doesn't.

Read More:
- Top 10 Miranda Lambert Songs about Brutal, Brutal Revenge
- Top 10 Ridiculously Overproduced Matchbox Twenty Songs (I Love Anyway)

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Top 10 Miranda Lambert Songs about Brutal, Brutal Revenge

Categories: Lists

miranda lambert bed
Ma'am, please step away from the acoustic guitar.
I don't come by country music fandom naturally; people who do tell me that there are many reasons to enjoy the music of Miranda Lambert. But the most accessible route to Miranda Lambert appreciation ahead of Thursday's concert at Desert Sky Pavilion, so far as I can tell, is through her songs about taking a vicious and final revenge on men who have done her or someone else wrong.

Here, then, are 10 of those songs. Please be careful around her.

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Top 10 Overproduced Matchbox Twenty Moments I Enjoy in Spite of Myself

Categories: Lists

matchbox twenty
Matchbox Twenty tickets go on sale today at noon -- the show's July 26 at Comerica Theatre -- which means that this weekend is a time for you to reflect on whether, why, and how much you love America's most indestructible post-grunge band.

For me those answers are yes, because they're so overproduced and they don't care, and more than I used to be willing to admit. No mid-90s success put the "post" in "post-grunge" quite like Matchbox Twenty; two years after Kurt Cobain's death, they combined alt-rock volume and angst with 80s-rock polish, and four albums later every song sounds like grunge recorded by Phil Ramone inside an airlock. I'm supposed to dislike that, I think, but I don't -- I want to bounce a quarter off that guitar tone in "If You're Gone," and I will, and I will.

Here, then, are the Top 10 Overproduced Matchbox Twenty Moments I'm going to silently hope they can replicate live. (Does Matt Serletic tour with them?)

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Five Songs That Speak to Those Celebrating the Jodi Arias Guilty Verdict

Categories: Lists

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Illustration by Graham Smith
News broke within the last couple of hours that Jodi Arias was found "guilty as charged" by a jury of her peers in a Maricopa County Superior Court room for the brutal 2008 murder of lover Travis Alexander.

Needless to say, there's been much celebrating both outside the courthouse (where chanting went on all day) and across social media after the verdict was announced. For those celebrating Arias' conviction, we put together a quick mix of five songs befitting the guilty verdict, the killer herself, and the bizarre nature of the lengthy trial that's dominated Valley media for the past five months.

See Also:
- Jodi Arias Guilty of First-Degree Premeditated Murder, Jury Finds
- Jodi Arias' 10 Most Pathetic Tweets
- Psycho Killer: Jodi Arias' Kinky Death-Penalty Trial

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Neutral Milk Hotel Reunion: The Three Best (and Worst) Aeroplane Over the Sea Lyrics

Categories: Lists

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Troy Farah draws last month's Jeff Mangum show.
Longtime hermit, certified genius-oddball, and Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum is getting the band back together for a paltry smattering of tour dates this summer. In honor of the wonderful news, we've put together a list of the three best and three worst lines from NMH's magnum opus, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, an album that started off pretty much perfect and has only improved with age.

BEST: "I will spit until I learn how to speak." -- "King of Carrot Flowers, Pts. Two & Three"

In a record loaded with surreal abstractions, idiosyncratic poetics, and downright enigmatic and associative turns of phrase, it's the immediacy here that works so well: This is the type of line that'd make a good T-shirt or tattoo or would do well as one of those whatever the things you pin to Pinterest are called. It's a mantra, you might argue, for self-expression and underscores not only Mangum's superhuman ability for it, but his lovely voice as well.

WORST: "Semen stains the mountaintops. -- "Communist Daughter"

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20 Prince Albums You Still Can't Get on iTunes

prince (fallon)
Three years ago, Prince's relationship status with the Internet could best be described as "It's complicated."

"The Internet's completely over," he toldThe Daily Mirror, the UK newspaper which give away copies of his 20Ten album. (No, I haven't heard it, either.) "I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it, and then they get angry when they can't get it."

In 20Thirteen, though, it's like nothing ever happened: You can buy "Screwdriver," his new single, right now. Even so, his star-crossed affairs with the Internet -- not to mention plenty of record companies -- have resulted in large chunks of his discography still being unavailable for digital download, some of them among his very best work. 4 Shame on U, Purple 1!

Prince is playing the Marquee Theatre in Tempe on Tuesday and Wednesday.

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14 Musicians Tell You How to De-Stress, Overcome Obstacles, and Hate Birds

Categories: Lists

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Really, what can't this man tell us?
Sometimes we look to others' words for inspiration on how to go about our lives. It gives us guidance and hope, regardless of how fucked up, metaphorical, or philosophical those words may be.

So with the semester dwindling down to its final weeks, days, and hours, why not provide Up on the Sun readers with a little inspiration from some credible famous musicians on how to survive times like these. A different perspective on life is always good, right?

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lists, quotes

Margaret Thatcher Protest Songs Came in Every Genre (Hi, Public Enemy)

Categories: Lists

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The Iron Lady

Monday's news of former English prime minister Margaret Thatcher's death elicited mixed responses. Some sites praised the Iron Lady's leadership tactics, while others celebrated her death. Pushing to get "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead" in the Top 40 charts hours after Thatcher's death is pretty tacky, but not completely surprising, given the history of most Thatcher-inspired songs.

Songs praising Margaret Thatcher are few and far between, so here are five songs from various genres about England's first female prime minister.

See also: Billy Bragg, Crescent Ballroom, 3/26/13


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10 Star Wars Songs to Ease Your Rage Now That Disney's Killed LucasArts

Categories: Lists

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Ever since Disney's acquisition of LucasFilms was announced, the prognosis by fans has been mixed. Three new Star Wars movies is good news, right? Sure, but what about Wednesday's news that Disney has shut down LucasArts?

Yeah, the future of the saga a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away is up for debate, but here's what isn't: Star Wars has had a profound impact on pop culture and pop music. So even if Episode VII goes the way of The Phantom Menace, we can take solace in some nerdtastic music related to Star Wars. In fact, since the Spock/golf shirt/Pantera-loving pop-punk outfit Nerf Herder is making its way to Pub Rock on Friday, April 26, it's a good time to press play on some Star Wars-inspired songs.

See also:

-Seven Rumors About Star Wars and the New Trilogy: What's True and What's Bantha Fodder
-Pinback's Rob Crow Has A Lot of Thoughts Concerning
Star Wars


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10 Best Punk Bars in Phoenix

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Melissa Fossum
Angry Samoans at Hollywood Alley
Phoenix has a long tradition of punk bars that serve up cheap beer and fast, aggressive (sometimes sloppy) punk rock. Some great venues have closed over the past few years, and while we dearly miss Jugheads and Rogue West, punk bars continue to thrive in the Valley of the Sun. Most are situated in unassuming suburban strip malls, but these locations continue to host some of the best local and national acts the genre has to offer.

See also:

-Top 10 Hard Rock Venues in Phoenix
-10 Best Country Bars in Metro Phoenix


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